'Oh God.' Longtime city worker accused of stealing $750,000

A low-level clerk in City Hall embezzled almost $750,000 in permit fees over five and a half years. (Posted on: April 10, 2014)

A low-level clerk in City Hall embezzled almost $750,000 in permit fees over five and a half years. (Posted on: April 10, 2014)

Steve SchmadekeTribune reporter

A low-level clerk in City Hall embezzled almost $750,000 in permit fees over five and a half years without raising any alarms by depositing hundreds of checks payable to the city in business and personal bank accounts she controlled, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

Antionette Chenier, a city employee since 1990, was caught only after Charter One Bank officials noticed unusual activity in the business account in January and confronted her.

In unsealing a criminal complaint charging Chenier with embezzlement, prosecutors made another embarrassing disclosure for city officials: Chenier lived in south suburban Homewood in apparent violation of the city’s residency requirement?

Chenier, a clerk for the city’s Department of Transportation, processed permit fees that allowed moving vans and Dumpsters to block public ways. Most of the stolen checks, made payable to the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications, ended up in the business account that she had named “OEMC Chenier,” prosecutors said.

When confronted by a bank official in January, Chenier claimed she opened the account for a failed cleaning business she had started – the Office of Emergency Management Cleaning, according to the charges.

The bank instead notified authorities, leading to an investigation by the FBI, Internal Revenue Service and the city’s Inspector General Office.

In her initial appearance Wednesday in federal court, Chenier, 50, appeared distraught, dropping her head into her hands, sobbing and saying, “Oh God,” while meeting with her attorney before the hearing.

She later buckled as a prosecutor told a judge that Chenier faced up 10 years in prison. Chenier was later released on her own recognizance.

Chenier was charged with embezzling $741,300 in a scheme lasting from August 2008 until January 2014.

The 24-year city veteran makes $60,000 a year, city records showed.

The mountain of cash Chenier allegedly amassed came from the permit fees paid by companies to park a moving van or Dumpster in the public street or right-of-way. Those fees run from $25 to $200 a day and can double in the city’s central business district, prosecutors said.

Although the Transportation Department collects those fees, many companies still make out checks to OEMC, a city agency that previously administered the program.

Chenier exploited that fact by siphoning checks to OEMC by depositing them to her “OEMC Chenier” business bank account, prosecutors said.

Peter Scales, a spokesman for the Transportation Department, said it is moving to improve its security measures “to ensure this criminal behavior cannot happen again.”

Prosecutors said Chenier lived in Homewood, but Scales said his agency showed a city address on file for her.

The Homewood property is a modest one-story brick home with a one-car garage on a dead-end street. No one answered the door when a reporter stopped at the home Wednesday.

Her scheme allegedly began in August 2008 and finally unraveled in January when the bank froze her account. She assured a bank official who called her that month that the deposits were “all fine” but later said she would pay back the money and asked the officer “not to report this,” according to the charges.

When the officer told her that the deposits looked like embezzlement, she said, “Please don’t use those words,” prosecutors said.